The Stats of the Nation: Immigration, benefits and inequality
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What kind of state does the UK find itself in as we start 2026? That’s the question Tim Harford and the More or Less team is trying to answer in a series of five special programmes.
In the final episode, we’re looking at the numbers behind some of the UK’s most potent political debates:
Has 98% of the UK’s population growth come from immigration?
Do we spend more on benefits in the UK than in other high-income countries?
Is the gap between rich and poor growing?
Get in touch if you’ve seen a number in the news you think we should take a look at: moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Contributors:
Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University Lukas Lehner, Assistant Professor at the University of Edinburgh Arun Advani, Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation and a Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick. Alex Scholes, Research Director at NatCen
Credits:
Presenter: Tim Harford Producers: Lizzy McNeill, Nathan Gower, Katie Solleveld and Charlotte McDonald Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Sound mix: Sarah Hockley and James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast, The Traitors Uncloaked. |
| 0:12.7 | But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's Saturday bonus episodes, |
| 0:18.2 | The Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Rylan, and comedy specials |
| 0:22.2 | from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffel and Rommashranganathan. |
| 0:25.9 | However, and maybe I'm biased, it's really all about The Traitors Uncloaked. |
| 0:30.3 | So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:37.1 | Hello and welcome to this special series of More or Less with me, Tim Harford. |
| 0:42.4 | Every day this week we've been casting our more or less eye over a few of the statistical conundrums facing the UK. |
| 0:50.2 | We've made it to Friday. |
| 0:52.0 | And you know what that means. |
| 0:53.6 | It's time for us to take a trip to our desert island. |
| 0:57.1 | On today's program, we're going to give you a cut out and keep guide to three of the big questions that might well play a part in the political debate on our wonderful island in 2006. |
| 1:07.7 | We'll unpack benefit spending, explore inequality. And to begin with, we're going to tell you some useful numbers on immigration. |
| 1:36.7 | My more or less castaway today is the migration analyst Madeline Sumption, which kind of fits, right? |
| 1:42.8 | She's the director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, a regular Radio 4 interviewee, |
| 1:45.7 | and most importantly, a friend of the program here on More or Less. And I've no doubt she has an incredible backstory, but with not really |
| 1:50.7 | Desert Island Discs, they won't even let us use the music. So let's talk about immigration. |
| 1:56.2 | And let's start with a question from loyal listener Emma, who asked us to look into the authenticity |
| 2:01.5 | of a claim that she read in the Telegraph. That claim is net migration accounted for nearly |
| 2:08.5 | 98% of the growth in the UK's population last year. Official figures show. When the claim was made, |
| 2:21.6 | last year was 2024, and Madeline, I know some interesting immigration figures have come out since the email arrived in our inbox. But |
... |
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